Australian Cattle Dog

The Australian Cattle Dog is also called and referred to as the Queensland Heeler. They are a breed of cattle herding dogs that originated from Australia. They are short coated and medium sized. They also have an independent streak. Full of energy and highly intelligent is what they generally are show no signs of being fragile. They are full of symmetry. It’s like there is no part in it that draws less attention, and there isn’t any part in it that draws all the excess attention.

Their show bred counterparts tend to have hard and well conditioned muscles. The male counterparts of the Australian Cattle Dog stand tall at around 18 to 20 inches (46 to 51 cm) and the females stand tall at around 17 to 19 inches (43 to 48 cm). These are well muscled dogs built for the outback. They have a coat of coarse hair and an under coast of almost woolly feel to it. An Australian Cattle Dogs tail is long and lies low generally with a white strip on it. A healthy, active and a happy Australian Cattle Dog would weight somewhere around 30 to 60 pounds (14 to 27 kg).

As per the Canadian Kennel club and the American Kennel club, the Australian Cattle Dog should have an un-docked tail. It should be long and have a natural feel to it too. It should follow the slope on the dogs back and the tail should hand really low to the ground. Once the dog is exited, then it may carry it the way it wants, but it should have a good amount of brush in them. The tails sometimes are docked to avoid any injuries from cattle while the dogs are at work. In case of an injury, a vet should have a look at it and fix it within 3 days. That’s the time within which it can be fixed. People often confuse these dogs with Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dogs. They do resemble each other a bit, but are entirely different dogs. The Australian Cattle Dog is leaner and taller whereas as the Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog has a more square body.

There was a small sample of tests conducted on 11 Australian Cattle Dogs, and the average life expectancy on them turned out to be a minimum of 11.7 years. The healthy ones who were fit and accident free did make it up to a maximum of 15.9 years. They still aren’t free from hereditary diseases such as cancer which had a chance of occurring of 12% among those 11 dogs. There is this one report that cannot be verified by any means at our present day about a Australian Cattle Dog that had lived for 29.5 years. The dogs name was Bluey and it was born in Australia in 1910. There is no record of what the dog looked like, or how it was related to the present generation of the Australian Cattle Dog.